Firefox 16 adds more developer muscle, but Mac OS features lag

A new dev toolbar and command line for Firefox, but Lion gestures are AWOL.

Mozilla has announced the public availability of Firefox 16, the latest version of its open-source web browser. While this version is light on new features that most users will notice—and missing some features many faithful users have been expecting—there are some major additions under the hood that will make Firefox 16 a better platform for developing apps for both the desktop browser and mobile web.

As we've reported, Firefox 15 included a whole host of user experience features, including some impressive support for web-based gaming. Firefox 16 is focused more on pushing forward the browser's support for advanced Cascading Style Sheets features and HTML 5 programming interfaces, as well as a pair of web APIs suited specifically to tablets and mobile devices. There's also a new feature of the browser that will appeal to both developers and power users: a command line that drives many of the browser's internal tools.

Underneath, there's a performance tweak to the garbage collection in Firefox's JavaScript engine. There's also a new security feature rolled out in Firefox 16, called "opt-in activation," that will allow Mozilla to reach out and configure users' browsers to prompt them to allow out-of-date or known vulnerable browser plug-ins from running.

But what's missing from Firefox 16 is just as important—or perhaps more important—than what made it into this release. Firefox 16 still (at least officially) lacks a built-in PDF reader—while reading PDFs is supported through a browser add-in, the internal reader is still experimental. And more notably for Mac users, a whole raft of bug fixes for support of Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion have missed release—without any indication of when they'll finally be rolled in.

By your command

The Developer Command Line is integrated into Firefox's new Developer Toolbar, which also gives users quick access to Firefox's integrated Web console, JavaScript debugger, and page element inspection tools. Normally out of view, the toolbar can be summoned by pressing the Shift and F2 keys.

Enlarge/ The command line box in Firefox 16, indicated by the arrow, allows developers and power-users to quickly access key features of the browser's development environment and settings.

The commands are all documented within the Command Line's own help system. In addition, as you type into the Command Line bar, Firefox autocompletes commands, and offers syntactic help in completing them.

Each of the developer tools that are launchable from the Developer Toolbar are also fully wired into the command line, so developers can keep their fingers on the keyboard, using text commands to launch and manipulate the Web console and JavaScript debugger, to configure break points in JavaScript code, and make changes to various attributes of the page they're working on. The command line can also be used with the Inspector to launch specific views of the page contents—such as the 3D "Tilt" visualization of a page's elements, which can be opened and rotated from the command line.

There are some features of the command line tool that will be useful to non-developers as well. You can also use the command line to list and clear cookies, change the settings for browser add-ons, restart the browser, and even take screenshots of a browser page.

Changes under the hood

The major performance improvement in Firefox 16 is the introduction of incremental garbage collection. Firefox's JavaScript engine previously collected memory from scripts that were no longer running in big, long-running blocks; now it performs the culling in smaller segments to avoid a performance hit.

Out-of-date plugins (such as Flash players, for example) have long been a weak point in browser security. In Firefox 14, Mozilla introduced a feature that allowed users to configure all plug-ins to require user authorization to launch, called "click to play," that would at least allow security-conscious users to know when a web page was trying to execute content in one of them. The "click-to-play" feature isn't exactly something that is easily configured by an average user right now—it's buried in the about:config advanced configuration screen accessible through the browser itself.

Enlarge/ An example of a blocked plug-in—Flash on the YouTube homepage.

The opt-in feature has been extended in Firefox 16 to allow Mozilla to remotely configure "click to play" for specific plug-ins based on information from their developers. This isn't a feature users can configure—it's specifically wired into Mozilla's update system.

For example, in the event of a Flash player vulnerability, Adobe could pass an alert through Mozilla to users, prompting users when a site tries to launch the plug-in with an alert—essentially nagging them until they update the out-of-date software, while giving them the opportunity to avoid malicious content in the meantime. A similar feature is already part of Google Chrome.

What's missing for Mac OS X?

While the inline PDF reader is currently slotted for Firefox 18—which will likely be released before the end of the year—the Mac OS X fixes have dropped completely off Mozilla's release tracking radar. Some of the issues have been resolved, such as the use of Lion's (and Mountain Lion's) native scrollbars, and support for full-screen mode (though I experienced some bugs in full screen support when using it on a MacBook with a second, external monitor).

Also, Firefox 16 finally adds support for the VoiceOver voice-assisted navigation feature in Mac OS X, allowing users to navigate through content from their keyboard and describing content by voice as it's moused over. But other interface elements, such as support for multitouch gestures like pinching to zoom in and out (already supported on Firefox's mobile browser) and the three-finger double-tap to bring up a dictionary definition of a word), remain untouched.

The same is true for the swiping gesture for moving back and forth through history, as is supported in Safari. (Chrome supports these gestures, but without the animation used by other applications.)

Mac interface purists holding out for those features won't be happy anytime soon. That's because the bug requests to make Firefox more Lion-friendly haven't even been assigned yet. Considering there's a whole new set of gesture-based fixes that will be needed to support Windows 8, it's not likely they'll be getting much priority.

Promoted Comments

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

They're still working to attract users even on the Windows platform. They don't have any lack of potential users there even to this day. There's a reason the Windows platform is the Priority 1 for development. You can argue about it and hate it all day but it's simple cold hard logic. They devote the most resources to the platform with the most users.

Firefox used to be my go-to browser on my Macs and my PCs. It was especially useful for viewing sites on the Mac that seemed to be coded on Windows for Windows. Except for the insecure ActiveX garbage, Firefox made IE-targeted sites work well on the Mac. Of course, on the PC, Firefox was/is the more secure choice.

As web sites moved away from IE-specific coding, and toward open standards, Firefox became less necessary, and Safari became universally useful. And then came Chrome, as well.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.) That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period. That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

That's quite enlightening. What I read in those discussions was a group of prima donnas complaining that they didn't like the way MacOS Lion works (fullscreen mode only uses one monitor, don't like the new-style hiding scrollbars) and working out how to sidestep the OS and/or implement almost, but not quite, the same functionality in their own code.

The closest thing I saw to an Apple bug was a "backwards compatibility" issue they raised because the size of the scrollbars changed, breaking some assumptions in their code that they should never have been making in the first place.

With attitude like this, it's no wonder that Firefox has never quite felt native.

CPU/Mem utilisation has improved HUGELY in the last yr, still always room for improvement ofc, but if it continues to improve at the rate is has been, the differences overall should be mostly negligible in another yr.

CPU/Mem utilisation has improved HUGELY in the last yr, still always room for improvement ofc, but if it continues to improve at the rate is has been, the differences overall should be mostly negligible in another yr.

Sure, I agree... Completely.

However, the concern is that I found some open, related bugs on bugzilla since... years ago.

Can't speak to the Street View navigation via keyboard in Safari since I no longer have Flash installed (the version included with Chromium's good enough for my purposes).

I know this is slightly off-topic and nitpick-y, but if you're using an *official* chromium build, it will not contain the pepperflash player which comes only with Chrome.

I would *highly* recommend that you check that out ASAP. The version of pepperflash bundled with whatever chromium.app you have could easily have come from a version of chrome 3+ versions out of date and containing many security issues.

The click to play feature is wonderful I mostly use opera and it has the same feature deep in the about:config but from having browsers crash occasionally and being in general slow when having lots of tabs opened (30+) to fast and responsive and less annoying ads is just a plus... I support websites that is payed through ads but flash heavy ads is still a no go... sure it is sometimes annoying to click twice to play a flash movie but worth it...

And it's always nice to see when developers get more muscles (not) sorry for the bad pun

That's quite enlightening. What I read in those discussions was a group of prima donnas complaining that they didn't like the way MacOS Lion works (fullscreen mode only uses one monitor, don't like the new-style hiding scrollbars) and working out how to sidestep the OS and/or implement almost, but not quite, the same functionality in their own code.

The closest thing I saw to an Apple bug was a "backwards compatibility" issue they raised because the size of the scrollbars changed, breaking some assumptions in their code that they should never have been making in the first place.

With attitude like this, it's no wonder that Firefox has never quite felt native.

I noticed that years ago when I submitted a bug about the green button maximizing the window instead of "rightsizing" it as other Mac applications do. Over the years this just lead to endless discussions about why maximizing the window is what's the right thing to do and why that Apple thing about just making the window large enough to show all the content without having to scroll was wrong.

The button still maximizes. Firefox still doesn't use the Keychain for passwords. And so on.

It's not just features. There's a distressingly common hard-locking bug that's OS X-specific and that's been around since version 3.0. In the almost four years since it was reported, nobody has been assigned and the bug remains. It's difficult to excuse this level of apathy towards a platform.

Can't speak to the Street View navigation via keyboard in Safari since I no longer have Flash installed (the version included with Chromium's good enough for my purposes).

I know this is slightly off-topic and nitpick-y, but if you're using an *official* chromium build, it will not contain the pepperflash player which comes only with Chrome.

I would *highly* recommend that you check that out ASAP. The version of pepperflash bundled with whatever chromium.app you have could easily have come from a version of chrome 3+ versions out of date and containing many security issues.

There's an extra quote in your post that doesn't belong there Omoronovo. I didn't write that remark about Street View and Chromium; effgee did.

I give Firefox a shot every new revision, but I'm always let down, as was the case with 16. They can improve all the benchmarks they want, the FEEL of it is sluggish compared to Chrome. I want it to get better, I love how FF renders fonts in comparison to Chrome, and I like the smooth scrolling better than any addon I've found, but the UI lags just kill it for me. With Chrome or opera you can be loading a bunch of tabs in the background and the one you are working on stays smooth, while Firefox gets janky.

It's not just features. There's a distressingly common hard-locking bug that's OS X-specific and that's been around since version 3.0. In the almost four years since it was reported, nobody has been assigned and the bug remains. It's difficult to excuse this level of apathy towards a platform.

Does Chrome have an open (truly public facing) bug-tracker? It'd be interesting to see if there's any long-standing OS X bugs for it too. Be surprised if there wasn't, wouldn't expect it to be as bad, but there'd be some.

Adobe: "hey Apple, we really want to improve the experience on MacOS X, are you able to help us by providing certain low level API's so we can achieve that?"Apple: "Fuck you!"Adobe: "pardon?"Apple: "Fuck you, and fuck your Flash, h264/AAC/HTML5 is the future! bo yah!"Adobe: "But those technologies are limited at the moment"Apple: "Fuck you! stop annoying us, we're trying to change the world!"

The worst part was that Apple finally decided to open the API's, and then something like 2 months later, started trash talking Flash out the wazoo. So Adobe took the fall due to Apple's control-freak stance.

You showed exactly what the problem is. I should have explained better, i see. In Safari you can choose between 3 search engines that Apple thinks you need. In FF you can install many many search engines. I have them for Amazon, Wikipedia, Webster, and many others. Very handy.And I need Flash because many websites for computer games still use it, unfortunately. So I keep using Firefox until its dead, I think.

Again, please take a closer peek before making these statements. Yes, Apple thinks that offering the three most popular search engines is sufficient for most users.But at the same time you can not only download (free) Safari extensions direct from Apple's website that allow you to add virtually any search engine imaginable, there's also the ever-prominent (and also free) Safari plugin Glims that lets you define any search engine/query your heart could possibly desire.

I don't even use Safari for anything other than ensuring that my work renders properly, but dismissing it on the basis of assumptions that are largely incorrect strikes me as quite odd.

(Oh, and Flash is Flash, regardless of what browser the plugin is running in on any given computing platform. If the keyboard navigation for Street View works in Firefox for OS X, I'm ≥99% certain it'll also work in Safari since the plugin is the same)

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.)

Bugs have priority. What work should they have not done in order to fix these (minor, some might say) issues on a platform with less marketshare (btw, I am a happy Firefox-on-Mac user).

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That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period.

I fail to understand the difference.

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That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Disdain is a strong word, but yes. The Linux version has been in worse shape than the Mac version for years now. Mozilla used to be a very Linux-focused organization, but gradually many of the developers moved to being Mac users, and the "fix my own bug" motivation that kept the Linux version interesting went away. But it's a logical decision, considering (again) marketshare.

If the issues on Mac (or Linux) were annoying enough, some community developer on those platforms would endeavor to fix them. Since the community doesn't seem to care all that much, it's up to Mozilla to prioritize their own work. Why is this so hard to understand?

You showed exactly what the problem is. I should have explained better, i see. In Safari you can choose between 3 search engines that Apple thinks you need. In FF you can install many many search engines. I have them for Amazon, Wikipedia, Webster, and many others. Very handy.And I need Flash because many websites for computer games still use it, unfortunately. So I keep using Firefox until its dead, I think.

Again, please take a closer peek before making these statements. Yes, Apple thinks that offering the three most popular search engines is sufficient for most users.But at the same time you can not only download (free) Safari extensions direct from Apple's website that allow you to add virtually any search engine imaginable, there's also the ever-prominent (and also free) Safari plugin Glims that lets you define any search engine/query your heart could possibly desire.

I don't even use Safari for anything other than ensuring that my work renders properly, but dismissing it on the basis of assumptions that are largely incorrect strikes me as quite odd.

(Oh, and Flash is Flash, regardless of what browser the plugin is running in on any given computing platform. If the keyboard navigation for Street View works in Firefox for OS X, I'm ≥99% certain it'll also work in Safari since the plugin is the same)

Thanks for the info, I really didn't know that. I did look for search engine plugins but couldn't find any, at least not the ones I like. I must admit I didn't look very hard though. I also didn't know that there is a Flash plugin for Safari. I thought Apple was still banning Flash.

I’d be happy if they would just fix JavaScript and CSS performance on Mac OS X. A prime example is browsing photo albums on Facebook, which causes Firefox to consume 1–2 GB of RAM on its own on my MBP. The same version of Firefox on my Windows 7 system does nothing of the sort with the same extensions and plug-ins loaded. Safari and Chrome on my laptop are similarly unaffected.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.)

Bugs have priority. What work should they have not done in order to fix these (minor, some might say) issues on a platform with less marketshare (btw, I am a happy Firefox-on-Mac user).

Quote:

That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period.

I fail to understand the difference.

Quote:

That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Disdain is a strong word, but yes. The Linux version has been in worse shape than the Mac version for years now. Mozilla used to be a very Linux-focused organization, but gradually many of the developers moved to being Mac users, and the "fix my own bug" motivation that kept the Linux version interesting went away. But it's a logical decision, considering (again) marketshare.

If the issues on Mac (or Linux) were annoying enough, some community developer on those platforms would endeavor to fix them. Since the community doesn't seem to care all that much, it's up to Mozilla to prioritize their own work. Why is this so hard to understand?

The UX developers are mostly on Windows, and support there does lag behind - but it's superficial, it all goes away if you're using something like vimperator. A very high number of the developers who work on the C++ codebase do use Linux. What about the Linux version is in bad shape? Yes, Firefox has some bugs specific to the platform (as it does with all the others), but I couldn't list any for you without going to the bug tracker and digging around - I don't encounter any.

I've found the optional gstreamer support to be a pretty killer feature - mp4, opus, h.264, etc. all run fine. Although, it's likely it could be built that way on other platforms too.

If I were on the Mozilla team, I would assign resources to the Windows version of Firefox too. OS X users seem mostly happy with Safari.

Why would someone switch to Firefox and be treated as a second-rate citizen? We had enough of that from Adobe with Flash and Acrobat.

You use a product with second rate marketshare, you should be prepared to be treated like second rate citizens. I don't know why this is a foreign concept to anyone. I have to deal with it all the time with my Windows Phone. You should know what you're getting into when you pick a platform that is vastly outperformed in market penetration and developer interest when you go to use it.

When someone asks why Firefox isn't picking up in OS X, it's because they're not doing anything to attract users. Firefox will be a second-rate browser on the Mac because that's all Mozilla wants to make.

Usually when a business wants to expand into an existing market, it works hard to attract that market. If they don't care to do that, then they'll be an also-ran.

They're still working to attract users even on the Windows platform. They don't have any lack of potential users there even to this day. There's a reason the Windows platform is the Priority 1 for development. You can argue about it and hate it all day but it's simple cold hard logic. They devote the most resources to the platform with the most users.

Firefox used to be my go-to browser on my Macs and my PCs. It was especially useful for viewing sites on the Mac that seemed to be coded on Windows for Windows. Except for the insecure ActiveX garbage, Firefox made IE-targeted sites work well on the Mac. Of course, on the PC, Firefox was/is the more secure choice.

As web sites moved away from IE-specific coding, and toward open standards, Firefox became less necessary, and Safari became universally useful. And then came Chrome, as well.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7? (Lion was first released to developers over 18 months ago.) That's not a market share decision. That's a lack of interest, period. That's telling your loyal Mac-using customer, "We don't need you so much anymore." Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

Very well said. It's also worth noting that Firefox's Window's share has peaked and somewhat stagnated, and that OS X is a growth platform, so if Firefox are to attract many more users to their platform, they should care about OS X and for that matter iOS.

I started using Firefox at version 0.4, I think it was called Firebird at the time, on Windows. When I switched to Mac in 2006, I went straight to Firefox, ignoring Safari completely. After Lion was released, I gave Firefox 9 months before giving up and switching to Safari because so many OS features were missing. Mozilla has made some strange choices in regards to OS X support, codec support and other ubiquitous functionality.

I've found the optional gstreamer support to be a pretty killer feature - mp4, opus, h.264, etc. all run fine. Although, it's likely it could be built that way on other platforms too.

Clearly I'm out-of-date on the state of Linux support, then, as I thought gstreamer support was a WONTFIX. Things must have changed in the 1.5 years since I stopped using desktop Linux, so I take back my prior statement.

You showed exactly what the problem is. I should have explained better, i see. In Safari you can choose between 3 search engines that Apple thinks you need. In FF you can install many many search engines. I have them for Amazon, Wikipedia, Webster, and many others. Very handy.And I need Flash because many websites for computer games still use it, unfortunately. So I keep using Firefox until its dead, I think.

While Safari offers only 3 search engines in the dropdown menu, you can easily install just about any other.I myself used DuckDuckGo for an extended period of time. Safari has a nice JS based extension API you know?

I'm a former user of Firefox, but I switched shortly after I adopted Lion. I wanted to stick around for a while, but Firefox on the Mac has always had a spotty adoption of features for the Mac. After four months of absolutely no support for any of Lion's new APIs, I stopped using it and switched to Chrome. The fact that Mozilla's support for Lion a year and a half out is still spotty feels like an indication that they have no real interest in properly supporting the platform. (In comparison, Chrome had native full-screen, gestural support and correctly-rendering scrollbars in the beta within a week of Lion's release, and added them to the final version a few months later.)

Really frustrating to see OSX being treated as second-class, especially when I thought one of the major goals of firefox was to be cross-platform. I'm sure Safari is fine for some people, but I'm the sort of person who likes to customize the crap out of my browser, and Firefox is really the only choice for that sort of thing. Safari is the complete opposite; anyone who uses Apple-designed applications is probably familiar with Apple's (often quite frustrating) "we'll give you one way to do things, and you'll like it" approach.

Incidentally, can I post an obligatory "Why can't Firefox use a sane version-numbering system again?" I'm sure the topic has been beat to death, but a major release should be, well, a major release, not bugfixes.

On Linux Firefox is my only real option because I just cannot be comfortable using s browser built by a data mining operation so Chrome/Chromium are right out.A choice made easier because of how fugly the Chrome UI is and how it ignores the system theme completely. Even to the extent the window widgets are in the wrong location.I continue to be perplexed at how many of my ARS geek peers like Chrome because of the built in spying and heinous UI design.

Mozilla have always spent too much time for the tiny loud-mouth spoilt hipster minority with "Macs". About time that they are getting ignored for a change, though some in Mozilla continue to be obsessed with their local Bay Area exploitation company as they have introduced some "Mac"-only features with their latest release.

* can easily run a session with >50 tabs (at least on osx chrome & safari just can't do this), heck even 500 doesn't slow it down.

Then your experience is vastly different from mine. Firefox with say three or four tabs loading in the background becomes unusable for the time they are loading even on loaded tabs, while Chrome and Opera stay snappy in the same situation. 50 IDLE tabs, maybe, but that's no challenge for Chrome or Opera either. Loading tabs while working, forget about it.

On Windows on a C2D. Maybe on a computer with faster single-core performance Firefox would be ok since it only uses one thread for any number of tabs.

Why can the OS not map those gestures to ALT+Left Arrow & ALT+Right Arrow (obviously using the OSX equivalents to these shortcuts)? Isn't that the exact method that allows the side buttons on most mice to work across all platforms without the browser maker required to specifically code support for it?

I'm surprised that in browser PDF support is considered a feature. I prefer files to load in separate applications typically.

It sounds like whatever browser you're using has really shit support for PDF.

Every browser has shit support for PDFs.

I don't enable PDF extensions for my browsers, since browsers don't give you the control an external application does. (And no, I haven't used an Adobe extension or reader since about version 7 - that bloatware was offensive.)

GG42 is right, PDF support is not a feature. I'm hoping I'll be able to turn that shit off via about:config when it becomes standard.

You're seriously expecting me to believe that a talented organization like Mozilla cannot fix bugs, or even acknowledge them, for Mac OS 10.7?...Are they treating their Linux version with the same disdain?

No, Mac users are telling Mozilla "we don't need you so much anymore". Apple has been very inconsistent with it's MacOS support, and even Ars has previously had articles lamenting Apple focussing on iPods and iPhones and neglecting MacOS. Why would Mozilla focus on MacOS when even most Apple users don't use MacOS?

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Looks to me like they're sinking all their brainpower into the Firefox Mobile OS. I guess because Meego needs a competitor. Or something.

No, they're focusing on Firefox Mobile because more and more people are using tablets, iPads, iPhones, and other smartphones for their basic computing needs. You have such a narrow self-interested view of this. Firefox Mobile will ultimately run on all of these platforms. Why focus on a desktop platform even Apple treats as second rate?

Very well said. It's also worth noting that Firefox's Window's share has peaked and somewhat stagnated, and that OS X is a growth platform, so if Firefox are to attract many more users to their platform, they should care about OS X and for that matter iOS.

This is so wrong. OSX is not a growth platform, mobile OS's are a growth platform, hence Mozilla's recent focus on mobile browsing. Why waste effort on a niche market (OSX is about 5% of desktops worldwide) when you can focus on a real growth platform, such as mobile?

Davebo wrote:

I'm having a hard time figuring out if this is a Firefox or Mac article. It seems aimed squarely at mac users only.

You mean the world doesn't revolve around their 5% marketshare? So it ain't so!

Why can the OS not map those gestures to ALT+Left Arrow & ALT+Right Arrow (obviously using the OSX equivalents to these shortcuts)? Isn't that the exact method that allows the side buttons on most mice to work across all platforms without the browser maker required to specifically code support for it?

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.